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OLD  CAP  COLLIER 


IRVIN  S.  COBB 


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A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 


By  Irvin  S.  Cobb 


Fiction 


FROM   PLACE   TO   PLACE 

THOSE   TIMES  AND  THESE 

LOCAL  COLOR 

OLD  JUDGE   PRIEST 

BACK   HOME 

THE   ESCAPE  OF  MR,  TRIMM 


Wit  and  Humor 


A  PLEA  FOR  OLD  CAP  COLLIER 

ONE  THIRD  OFF 

THE   ABANDONED   FARMERS 

THE   LIFE   OF  THE   PARTY 

EATING  IN  TWO  OR  THREE  LANGUAGES 

"OH  WELL,  YOU   KNOW  HOW  WOMEN  ARE!" 

F1BBLE   D.D. 

"SPEAKING  OF  OPERATIONS—" 
EUROPE  REVISED 
ROUGHING  IT  DE  LUXE 
CODE'S  BILL  OF  FARE 
COBB'S  ANATOMY 


Miscellany 


THE  THUNDERS  OT  SILENCE 
THE  GLORY  OF  THE  COMING 
PATHS  OF  GLORY 
"SPEAKING  OF  PRUSSIANS — " 


New  York 
George  H.  Dor  an  Company 


IX    MY    YOUTH    I    WAS    SPANKED    FREELY 
AND    FREQUENTLY 


A  Plea  for 
Old  Cap  Collier 

By 

Iruin  S.  Cobb 

Author  of 

'Back  Home/'  "Old  Judge  Priest"  "Speaking 
of  Operations—"  Etc. 

Frontispiece  by  Tony  Sarg 


New  York 
George  H.  Doran  Company 


9*1 

C£5 
1 


Copyright,  1921, 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


Copyright,  IQ20, 
By  The  Curtis  Publishing  Company 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 


To 

WILL  H.  HOGG,  ESQUIRE 


52.1G83 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 


FOR  a  good  many  years  now  I  have 
been  carrying  this  idea  round  with 
me.  It  was  more  or  less  of  a  loose 
and  unformed  idea,  and  it  wouldn't  jell. 
What  brought  it  round  to  the  solidification 
point  was  this:  Here  the  other  week,  being 
half  sick,  I  was  laid  up  over  Sunday  in  a 
small  hotel  in  a  small  seacoast  town.  I 
had  read  all  the  newspapers  and  all  the 
magazines  I  could  get  hold  of.  The  local 
bookstore,  of  course,  was  closed.  They 
won't  let  the  oysters  stay  open  on  Sunday 
in  that  town.  The  only  literature  my  fel 
low  guests  seemed  interested  in  was  mail 
order  tabs  and  price  currents. 

Finally,  when  despair  was  about  to  claim 
me  for  her  own,  I  ran  across  an  ancient 
Fifth  Reader,  all  tattered  and  stained  and 
having  that  smell  of  age  which  is  common 
to  old  books  and  old  sheep.  I  took  it  up 
to  bed  with  me,  and  I  read  it  through  from 
cover  to  cover.  Long  before  I  was  through 
the  very  idea  which  for  so  long  had  been 

[9] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

sloshing  round  inside  of  my  head — this 
idea  which,  as  one  might  say,  had  been 
aged  in  the  wood — took  shape.  Then  and 
there  I  decided  that  the  very  first  chance 
I  had  I  would  sit  me  down  and  write  a 
plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier. 

In  my  youth  I  was  spanked  freely  and 
frequently  for  doing  many  different  things 
that  were  forbidden,  and  also  for  doing 
the  same  thing  many  different  times  and 
getting  caught  doing  it.  That,  of  course, 
was  before  the  Boy  Scout  movement  had 
come  along  to  show  how  easily  and  how 
sanely  a  boy's  natural  restlessness  and  a 
boy's  natural  love  for  adventure  may  be 
directed  into  helpful  channels;  that  was 
when  nearly  everything  a  normal,  active 
boy  craved  to  do  was  wrong  and,  there 
fore,  held  to  be  a  spankable  offense. 

This  was  a  general  rule  in  our  town.  It 
did  not  especially  apply  to  any  particular 
household,  but  it  applied  practically  to  all 
the  households  with  which  I  was  in  any 
way  familiar.  It  was  a  community  where 

[10] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

an  old-fashioned  brand  of  applied  theology 
was  most  strictly  applied.  Heaven  was  a 
place  which  went  unanimously  Democratic 
every  fall,  because  all  the  Republicans  had 
gone  elsewhere.  Hell  was  a  place  full  of 
red-hot  coals  and  clinkered  sinners  and  un- 
baptized  babies  and  a  smell  like  somebody 
cooking  ham,  with  a  deputy  devil  coming 
in  of  a  morning  with  an  asbestos  napkin 
draped  over  his  arm  and  flicking  a  fire 
proof  cockroach  off  the  table  cloth  and 
leaning  across  the  back  of  Satan's  chair  and 
saying:  "Good  mornin',  boss.  How're  you 
going  to  have  your  lost  souls  this  mornin' 
— fried  on  one  side  or  turned  over?" 

Sunday  was  three  weeks  long,  and  longer 
than  that  if  it  rained.  About  all  a  fellow 
could  do  after  he'd  come  back  from  Sun 
day  school  was  to  sit  round  with  his  feet 
cramped  into  the  shoes  and  stockings  which 
he  never  wore  on  week  days  and  with  the 
rest  of  him  incased  in  starchy,  uncomfort 
able  dress-up  clothes — just  sit  round  and 
sit  round  and  itch.  You  couldn't  scratch 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

hard  either.  It  was  sinful  to  scratch 
audibly  and  with  good,  broad,  free  strokes, 
which  is  the  only  satisfactory  way  to 
scratch.  In  our  town  they  didn't  spend 
Sunday;  they  kept  the  Sabbath,  which  is 
a  very  different  thing. 

Looking  back  on  my  juvenile  years  it 
seems  to  me  that,  generally  speaking,  when 
spanked  I  deserved  it.  But  always  there 
were  two  punishable  things  against  wrhich 
— being  disciplined — my  youthful  spirit  re 
volted  with  a  sort  of  inarticulate  sense  of 
injustice.  One  was  for  violation  of  the 
Sunday  code,  which  struck  me  as  wrong 
— the  code,  I  mean,  not  the  violation — 
without  knowing  exactly  why  it  was 
wrong;  and  the  other,  repeated  times  with 
out  number,  was  when  I  had  been  caught 
reading  nickul  libraries,  erroneously  re 
ferred  to  by  our  elders  as  dime  novels. 

I  read  them  at  every  chance;  so  did 
every  normal  boy  of  my  acquaintance.  We 
traded  lesser  treasures  for  them;  we 
swapped  them  on  the  basis  of  two  old 

[12] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

volumes  for  one  new  one;  we  maintained 
a  clandestine  circulating-library  system 
which  had  its  branch  offices  in  every 
stable  loft  in  our  part  of  town.  The  more 
daring  among  us  read  them  in  school  be 
hind  the  shelter  of  an  open  geography 
propped  up  on  the  desk. 

Shall  you  ever  forget  the  horror  of  the 
moment  when,  carried  away  on  the  wings 
of  adventure  with  Nick  Carter  or  Big- Foot 
Wallace  or  Frank  Reade  or  bully  Old  Cap, 
you  forgot  to  flash  occasional  glances  of 
cautious  inquiry  forward  in  order  to  make 
sure  the  teacher  was  where  she  properly 
should  be,  at  her  desk  up  in  front,  and 
read  on  and  on  until  that  subtle  sixth  sense 
which  comes  to  you  when  a  lot  of  people 
begin  staring  at  you  warned  you  something 
was  amiss,  and  you  looked  up  and  round 
you  and  found  yourself  all  surrounded  by 
a  ring  of  cruel,  gloating  eyes? 

I  say  cruel  advisedly,  because  up  to  a 
certain  age  children  are  naturally  more 
cruel  than  tigers.  Civilization  has  pro- 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

vided  them  with  tools,  as  it  were,  for  prac 
ticing  cruelty,  whereas  the  tiger  must  rely 
only  on  his  teeth  and  his  bare  claws.  So 
you  looked  round,  feeling  that  the  shadow 
of  an  impending  doom  encompassed  you, 
and  then  you  realized  that  for  no  telling 
how  long  the  teacher  had  been  standing 
just  behind  you,  reading  over  your  shoul 
der. 

And  at  home  were  you  caught  in  the 
act  of  reading  them,  or — what  from  the 
parental  standpoint  was  almost  as  bad — 
in  the  act  of  harboring  them?  I  was. 
Housecleaning  times,  when  they  found 
them  hidden  under  furniture  or  tucked 
away  on  the  back  shelves  of  pantry  closets, 
I  was  paddled  until  I  had  the  feelings  of 
a  slice  of  hot,  buttered  toast  somewhat 
scorched  on  the  under  side.  And  each 
time,  having  been  paddled,  I  was  admon 
ished  that  boys  who  read  dime  novels — 
only  they  weren't  dime  novels  at  all  but 
cost  uniformly  five  cents  a  copy — always 
came  to  a  bad  end,  growing  up  to  be  crimi- 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

nals  or  Republicans  or  something  equally 
abhorrent.  And  I  was  urged  to  read  books 
which  would  help  me  to  shape  my  career 
in  a  proper  course.  Such  books  were  put 
into  my  hands,  and  I  loathed  them.  I 
know  now  why  when  I  grew  up  my  gorge 
rose  and  my  appetite  turned  against  so- 
called  classics.  Their  style  was  so  much 
like  the  style  of  the  books  which  older 
people  wanted  me  to  read  when  I  was  in 
my  early  teens. 

Such  were  the  specious  statements  ad 
vanced  by  the  oldsters.  And  we  had  no 
reply  for  their  argument,  or  if  we  had  one 
could  not  find  the  language  in  which  to 
couch  it.  Besides  there  was  another  and 
a  deeper  reason.  A  boy,  being  what  he  is, 
the  most  sensitive  and  the  most  secretive 
of  living  creatures  regarding  his  innermost 
emotions,  rarely  does  bare  his  real  thoughts 
to  his  elders,  for  they,  alas,  are  not  young 
enough  to  have  a  fellow  feeling,  and  they 
are  too  old  and  they  know  too  much  to  be 
really  wise. 

[is] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

What  we  might  have  answered,  had  we 
had  the  verbal  facility  and  had  we  not 
feared  further  painful  corporeal  measures 
for  talking  back — or  what  was  worse,  ridi 
cule — was  that  reading  Old  Cap  Collier 
never  yet  sent  a  boy  to  a  bad  end.  I  never 
heard  of  a  boy  who  ran  away  from  home 
and  really  made  a  go  of  it  who  was  act 
uated  at  the  start  by  the  mckul  librury. 
Burning  with  a  sense  of  injustice,  filled 
up  with  the  realization  that  we  were  not 
appreciated  at  home,  we  often  talked  of 
running  away  and  going  out  West  to  fight 
Indians,  but  we  never  did.  I  remember 
once  two  of  us  started  for  the  Far  West, 
and  got  nearly  as  far  as  Oak  Grove  Ceme 
tery,  when — the  dusk  of  evening  impend 
ing — we  decided  to  turn  back  and  give 
our  parents  just  one  more  chance  to  under 
stand  us. 

,  What,  also,  we  might  have  pointed  out 
was  that  in  a  five-cent  story  the  villain 
was  absolutely  sure  of  receiving  suitable 
and  adequate  punishment  for  his  misdeeds. 
[16] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

Right  then  and  there,  on  the  spot,  he  got 
his.  And  the  heroine  was  always  so  plu- 
perfectly  pure.  And  the  hero  always  was 
a  hero  to  his  finger  tips,  never  doing  any 
thing  unmanly  or  wrong  or  cowardly,  and 
always  using  the  most  respectful  language 
in  the  presence  of  the  opposite  sex.  There 
was  never  any  sex  problem  in  a  nickiil 
llbrury.  There  were  never  any  smutty 
words  or  questionable  phrases.  If  a  vil 
lain  said  "Curse  you!"  he  was  going  pretty 
far.  Any  one  of  us  might  whet  up  our 
natural  instincts  for  cruelty  on  Foxe's  Book 
of  Martyrs,  or  read  of  all  manner  of  un 
mentionable  horrors  in  the  Old  Testament, 
but  except  surreptitiously  we  couldn't  walk 
with  Nick  Carter,  whose  motives  were  ever 
pure  and  who  never  used  the  naughty  word 
even  in  the  passion  of  the  death  grapple 
with  the  top-booted  forces  of  sinister  eviL 
We  might  have  told  our  parents,  had 
we  had  the  words  in  which  to  state  the  case 
and  they  but  the  patience  to  listen,  that  in  a 
nickul  llbrury  there  was  logic  and  the 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

thrill  of  swift  action  and  the  sharp  spice 
of  adventure.  There,  invariably  virtue  was 
rewarded  and  villainy  confounded;  there, 
inevitably  was  the  final  triumph  for  law 
and  for  justice  and  for  the  right;  there 
embalmed  in  one  thin  paper  volume,  was 
all  that  Sandford  and  Merton  lacked;  all 
that  the  Rollo  books  never  had.  We  might 
have  told  them  that  though  the  Leather- 
stocking  Tales  and  Robinson  Crusoe  and 
Two  Years  Before  the  Mast  and  Ivanhoe 
were  all  wrell  enough  in  their  way,  the 
trouble  with  them  was  that  they  mainly 
were  so  long-winded.  It  took  so  much 
time  to  get  to  where  the  first  punch  was, 
whereas  Ned  Buntline  or  Col.  Prentiss 
Ingraham  would  hand  you  an  exciting  jolt 
on  the  very  first  page,  and  sometimes  in 
the  very  first  paragraph. 

You  take  J.  Fenimore  Cooper  now.  He 
meant  well  and  he  had  ideas,  but  his  In 
dians  were  so  everlastingly  slow  about 
getting  under  way  with  their  scalping 
operations!  Chapter  after  chapter  there 
[18] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

was  so  much  fashionable  and  difficult  lan 
guage  that  the  plot  was  smothered.  You 
couldn't  see  the  woods  for  the  trees. 

But  it  was  the  accidental  finding  of  an 
ancient  and  reminiscent  volume  one  Sun 
day  in  a  little 'hotel  which  gave  me  the 
cue  to  what  really  made  us  such  confirmed 
rebels  against  constituted  authority,  in  a 
literary  way  of  speaking.  The  thing  which 
inspired  us  with  hatred  for  the  so-called 
juvenile  classic  was  a  thing  which  struck 
deeper  even  than  the  sentiments  I  have 
been  trying  to  describe. 

The  basic  reason,  the  underlying  motive, 
lay  in  the  fact  that  in  the  schoolbooks  of 
our  adolescence,  and  notably  in  the  school 
readers,  our  young  mentalities  were  fed 
forcibly  on  a  pap  which  affronted  our  in 
telligence  at  the  same  time  that  it  cloyed 
our  adolescent  palates.  It  was  not  alto 
gether  the  lack  of  action;  it  was  more  the 
lack  of  plain  common  sense  in  the  literary 
spoon  victuals  which  they  ladled  into  us 
at  school  that  caused  our  youthful  souls 
[19] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

to  revolt.  In  the  final  analysis  it  was  this 
more  than  any  other  cause  which  sent  us 
up  to  the  haymow  for  delicious,  forbidden 
hours  in  the  company  of  Calamity  Jane 
and  Wild  Bill  Hickok. 

Midway  of  the  old  dog-eared  reader 
which  I  picked  up  that  day  I  came  across 
a  typical  example  of  the  sort  of  stuff  I 
mean.  I  hadn't  seen  it  before  in  twenty- 
five  years;  but  now,  seeing  it,  I  remem 
bered  it  as  clearly  almost  as  though  it  had 
been  the  week  before  instead  of  a  quarter 
of  a  century  before  when  for  the  first  time 
it  had  been  brought  to  my  attention.  It 
was  a  piece  entitled,  The  Shipwreck,  and 
it  began  as  follows: 

In  the  winter  of  1824  Lieutenant  G , 

of  the  United  States  Navy,  with  his  beauti 
ful  wife  and  child,  embarked  in  a  packet 
at  Norfolk  bound  to  South  Carolina. 

So  far  so  good.  At  least,  here  is  a  direct 
beginning.  A  family  group  is  going  some 
where.  There  is  an  implied  promise  that 

[20] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Colher 

before  they  have  traveled  very  far  some 
thing  of  interest  to  the  reader  will  happen 
to  them.  Sure  enough,  the  packet  runs  into 
a  storm  and  founders.  As  she  is  going 

down  Lieutenant  G •  puts  his  wife  and 

baby  into  a  lifeboat  manned  by  sailors,  and 
then — there  being  no  room  for  him  in  the 
lifeboat — he  remains  behind  upon  the  deck 
of  the  sinking  vessel,  while  the  lifeboat 
puts  off  for  shore.  A  giant  wave  overturns 
the  burdened  cockleshell  and  he  sees  its 
passengers  engulfed  in  the  waters.  Up  to 
this  point  the  chronicle  has  been  what  a 
chronicle  should  be.  Perhaps  the  phrase 
ology  has  been  a  trifle  toploftical,  and 
there  are  a  few  words  in  it  long  enough 
to  run  as  serials,  yet  at  any  rate  we  are 
getting  an  effect  in  drama.  But  bear  with 
me  while  I  quote  the  next  paragraph,  just 
as  I  copied  it  down: 

The  wretched  husband  saw  but  too  dis 
tinctly  the  destruction  of  all  he  held  dear. 
But  here  alas  and  forever  were  shut  off 
from  him  all  sublunary  prospects.  He 

[21]    " 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

fell  upon  the  deck — powerless,  senseless, 
a  corpse — the  victim  of  a  sublime  sensi 
bility! 

There's  language  for  you!  How  differ 
ent  it  is  from  that  historic  passage  when 
the  crack  of  Little  Sure  Shot's  rifle  rang 
out  and  another  Redskin  bit  the  dust. 
Nothing  is  said  there  about  anybody  hav 
ing  his  sublunary  prospects  shut  off;  noth 
ing  about  the  Redskin  becoming  the  victim 
of  a  sublime  sensibility.  In  fifteen  graphic 
words  and  in  one  sentence  Little  Sure  Shot 
croaked  him,  and  then  with  bated  breath 
you  moved  on  to  the  next  paragraph,  sure 
of  finding  in  it  yet  more  attractive  casual 
ties  snappily  narrated. 

No,  sir!  In  the  nickul  librury  the 
author  did  not  waste  his  time  and  yours 
telling  you  that  an  individual  on  becoming 
a  corpse  would  simultaneously  become 
powerless  and  senseless.  He  credited  your 
intelligence  for  something.  For  contrast, 
take  the  immortal  work  entitled  Deadwood 
Dick  of  Deadwood;  or,  The  Picked  Party; 

[22] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

by  Edward  L.  Wheeler,  a  copy  of  which 
has  just  come  to  my  attention  again  nearly 
thirty  years  after  the  time  of  my  first  read 
ing  of  it.  Consider  the  opening  para 
graph  : 

The  sun  was  just  kissing  the  mountain 
tops  that  frowned  down  upon  Billy-Goat 
Gulch,  and  in  the  aforesaid  mighty  seam 
in  the  face  of  mighty  Nature  the  shadows 
of  a  warm  June  night  were  gathering 
rapidly. 

The  birds  had  mostly  hushed  their  songs 
and  flown  to  their  nests  in  the  dismal  lonely 
pines,  and  only  the  tuneful  twang  of  a 
well-played  banjo  aroused  the  brooding 
quiet,  save  it  be  the  shrill,  croaking 
screams  of  a  crow,  perched  upon  the  top 
of  a  dead  pine,  which  rose  from  the  nearly 
perpendicular  mountain  side  that  retreated 
in  the  ascending  from  the  gulch  bottom. 

That,  as  I  recall,  was  a  powerfully  long 
bit  of  description  for  a  nickul  librury,  and 
having  got  it  out  of  his  system  Mr. 
Wheeler  wasted  no  more  valuable  space  on 
the  scenery.  From  this  point  on  he  gave 

[23] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

you  action — action  with  reason  behind  it 
and  logic  to  it  and  the  guaranty  of  a  proper 
climax  and  a  satisfactory  conclusion  to 
follow.  Deadwood  Dick  marched  many  a 
flower-strewn  mile  through  my  young  life, 
but  to  the  best  of  my  recollection  he  never 
shut  off  anybody's  sublunary  prospects.  If 
a  party  deserved  killing  Deadwood  just 
naturally  up  and  killed  him,  and  the  his 
torian  told  about  it  in  graphic  yet  straight 
forward  terms  of  speech;  and  that  was  all 
there  was  to  it,  and  that  was  all  there 
should  have  been  to  it. 

At  the  risk  of  being  termed  an  iconoclast 
and  a  smasher  of  the  pure  high  ideals  of 
the  olden  days,  I  propose  to  undertake  to 
show  that  practically  all  of  the  preposter 
ous  asses  and  the  impossible  idiots  of  litera 
ture  found  their  way  into  the  school  readers 
of  my  generation.  With  the  passage  of 
years  there  may  have  been  some  reform 
in  this  direction,  but  I  dare  affirm,  with 
out  having  positive  knowledge  of  the  facts, 
that  a  majority  of  these  half-wits  still  are 

[24] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

being  featured  in  the  grammar-grade  lit 
erature  of  the  present  time.  The  authors 
of  school  readers,  even  modern  school 
readers,  surely  are  no  smarter  than  the 
run  of  grown-ups  even,  say,  as  you  and  as 
I;  and  we  blindly  go  on  holding  up  as 
examples  before  the  eyes  of  the  young  of 
the  period  the  characters  and  the  acts  of 
certain  popular  figures  of  poetry  and  prose 
who — did  but  we  give  them  the  acid  test 
of  reason — would  reveal  themselves  either 
as  incurable  idiots,  or  else  as  figures  in 
scenes  and  incidents  which  physically 
could  never  have  occurred. 

You  remember,  don't  you,  the  school- 
book  classic  of  the  noble  lad  who  by  rea 
son  of  his  neat  dress,  and  by  his  use  in 
the  most  casual  conversation  of  the  sort 
of  language  which  the  late  Mr.  Henry 
James  used  when  he  was  writing  his  very 
Jamesiest,  secured  a  job  as  a  trusted  mes 
senger  in  the  large  city  store  or  in  the  city's 
large  store,  if  we  are  going  to  be  purists 
[25] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

about  it,  as  the  boy  in  question  undoubtedly 
was? 

It  seems  that  he  had  supported  his 
widowed  mother  and  a  large  family  of 
brothers  and  sisters  by  shoveling  snow  and, 
I  think,  laying  brick  or  something  of  that 
technical  nature.  After  this  lapse  of  years 
I  won't  be  sure  about  the  bricklaying,  but 
at  any  rate,  work  was  slack  in  his  regular 
line,  and  so  he  went  to  the  proprietor 
of  this  vast  retail  establishment  and  pro 
cured  a  responsible  position  on  the  strength 
of  his  easy  and  graceful  personal  address 
and  his  employment  of  some  of  the  most 
stylish  adjectives  in  the  dictionary.  At 
this  time  he  was  nearly  seven  years  old — 
yes,  sir,  actually  nearly  seven.  We  have 
the  word  of  the  schoolbook  for  it.  We 
should  have  had  a  second  chapter  on  this 
boy.  Probably  at  nine  he  was  being  con 
sidered  for  president  of  Yale — no,  Har 
vard.  He  would  know  too  much  to  be 
president  of  Yale. 

Then  there  was  the  familiar  instance  of 

[26] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

the  Spartan  youth  who  having  stolen  a 
fox  and  hidden  it  inside  his  robe  calmly 
stood  up  and  let  the  animal  gnaw  his  vitals 
rather  than  be  caught  with  it  in  his  pos 
session.  But,  why?  I  ask  you,  why? 
What  was  the  good  of  it  all?  What  ob 
ject  was  served?  To  begin  with,  the  boy 
had  absconded  with  somebody  else's  fox, 
or  with  somebody's  else  fox,  which  is  un 
doubtedly  the  way  a  compiler  of  school 
readers  would  phrase  it.  This,  right  at  the 
beginning,  makes  the  morality  of  the  trans 
action  highly  dubious.  In  the  second 
place,  he  showed  poor  taste.  If  he  was 
going  to  swipe  something,  why  should  he 
not  have  swiped  a  chicken  or  something 
else  of  practical  value? 

We  waive  that  point,  though,  and  come 
to  the  lack  of  discretion  shown  by  the  fox, 
He  starts  eating  his  way  out  through  the 
boy,  a  mussy  and  difficult  procedure,  when 
merely  by  biting  an  aperture  in  the  tunic 
he  could  have  emerged  by  the  front  way 
with  ease  and  dispatch.  And  what  is  the 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

final  upshot  of  it  all?  The  boy  falls  dead, 
with  a  large  unsightly  gap  in  the  middle 
of  him.  Probably,  too,  he  was  a  boy  whose 
parents  were  raising  him  for  their  own 
purposes.  As  it  is,  all  gnawed  up  in  this 
fashion  and  deceased  besides,  he  loses  his 
attractions  for  everyone  except  the  under 
taker.  The  fox  presumably  has  an  attack 
of  acute  indigestion.  And  there  you  are! 
Compare  the  moral  of  this  with  the  moral 
of  any  one  of  the  Old  Cap  Collier  series, 
where  virtue  comes  into  its  own  and  sanity 
is  prevalent  throughout  and  vice  gets  what 
it  deserves,  and  all. 

In  McGuffey's  Third  Reader,  I  think  it 
was,  occurred  that  story  about  the  small 
boy  who  lived  in  Holland  among  the  dikes 
and  dams,  and  one  evening  he  went  across 
the  country  to  carry  a  few  illustrated  post 
jcards  or  some  equally  suitable  gift  to  a 
poor  blind  man,  and  on  his  way  back  home 
in  the  twilight  he  discovered  a  leak  in 
the  sea  wall.  If  he  went  for  helg  the 
breach  might  widen  while  he  was  gone 

[28] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

and  the  whole  structure  give  way,  and  then 
the  sea  would  come  roaring  in,  carrying 
death  and  destruction  and  windmills  and 
wooden  shoes  and  pineapple  cheeses  on  its 
crest.  At  least,  this  is  the  inference  one 
gathers  from  reading  Mr.  McGuffey's  ac 
count  of  the  affair. 

So  what  does  the  quick-witted  youngster 
do?  He  shoves  his  little  arm  in  the  crevice 
on  the  inner  side,  where  already  the  water 
is  trickling  through,  thus  blocking  the  leak. 
All  night  long  he  stays  there,  one  small, 
half-frozen  Dutch  boy  holding  back  the 
entire  North  Atlantic.  Not  until  centuries 
later,  when  Judge  Alton  B.  Parker  runs 
for  president  against  Colonel  Roosevelt  and 
is  defeated  practically  by  acclamation,  is 
there  to  be  presented  so  historic  and  so 
magnificent  an  example  of  a  contest  against 
tremendous  odds.  In  the  morning  a  peas 
ant,  going  out  to  mow  the  tulip  beds,  finds 
the  little  fellow  crouched  at  the  foot  of 
the  dike  and  inquires  what  ails  him.  The 

[29] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

lad,  raising  his  weary  head — but  wait,   I 
shall  quote  the  exact  language  of  the  book: 

"I  am  hindering  the  sea  from  running 
in,"  was  the  simply  reply  of  the  child. 

Simple?  I'll  say  it  is!  Positively  noth 
ing  could  be  simpler  unless  it  be  the  stark 
simplicity  of  the  mind  of  an  author  who 
figures  that  when  the  Atlantic  Ocean  starts 
boring  its  way  through  a  crack  in  a  sea 
wall  you  can  stop  it  by  plugging  the  hole 
on  the  inner  side  of  the  sea  wall  with  a 
small  boy's  arm.  Ned  Buntline  may  never 
have  enjoyed  the  vogue  among  parents  and 
teachers  that  Mr.  McGuffey  enjoyed,  but 
I'll  say  this  for  him — he  knew  more  about 
the  laws  of  hydraulics  than  McGuffey  ever 
dreamed. 

And  there  was  Peter  Hurdle,  the  ragged 
lad  who  engaged  in  a  long  but  tiresome 
conversation  with  the  philanthropic  and 
inquisitive  Mr.  Lenox,  during  the  course 
of  which  it  developed  that  Peter  didn't 
want  anything.  When  it  came  on  to  storm 

[30] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

he  got  under  a  tree.  When  he  was  hungry 
he  ate  a  raw  turnip.  Raw  turnips,  it  would 
appear,  grew  all  the  year  round  in  the 
fields  of  the  favored  land  where  Peter  re 
sided.  If  the  chill  winds  of  autumn  blew 
in  through  one  of  the  holes  in  Peter's 
trousers  they  blew  right  out  again  through 
another  hole.  And  he  didn't  care  to  accept 
the  dime  which  Mr.  Lenox  in  an  excess 
of  generosity  offered  him,  because,  it 
seemed,  he  already  had  a  dime.  When 
it  came  to  being  plumb  contented  there 
probably  never  was  a  soul  on  this  earth 
that  was  the  equal  of  Master  Hurdle.  He 
even  was  satisfied  with  his  name,  which  I 
would  regard  as  the  ultimate  test. 

Likewise,  there  was  the  case  of  Hugh 
Idle  and  Mr.  Toil.  Perhaps  you  recall 
that  moving  story?  Hugh  tries  to  dodge 
work;  wherever  he  goes  he  finds  Mr. 
Toil  in  one  guise  or  another  but  always 
with  the  same  harsh  voice  and  the  same 
frowning  eyes,  bossing  some  job  in  a 
manner  which  would  cost  him  his  boss- 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

ship  right  off  the  reel  in  these  times  when 
union  labor  is  so  touchy.  And  what  is 
the  moral  to  be  drawn  from  this  narrative? 
I  know  that  all  my  life  I  have  been  try 
ing  to  get  away  from  work,  feeling  that 
T  was  intended  for  leisure,  though  never 
finding  time  somehow  to  take  it  up  seri 
ously.  But  what  was  the  use  of  trying  to 
discourage  me  from  this  agreeable  idea 
back  yonder  in  the  formulative  period  of 
my  earlier  years? 

In  Harper's  Fourth  Reader,  edition  of 
1888,  I  found  an  article  entitled  The  Dif 
ference  Between  the  Plants  and  Animals. 
It  takes  up  several  pages  and  includes  some 
of  the  fanciest  language  the  senior  Mr. 
Harper  could  disinter  from  the  un 
abridged.  In  my  own  case — and  I  think  I 
was  no  more  observant  than  the  average 
urchin  of  my  age — I  can  scarcely  remem 
ber  a  time  when  I  could  not  readily  deter 
mine  certain  basic  distinctions  between 
such  plants  and  such  animals  as  a  child 

[32] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

is  likely  to  encounter  in  the  temperate 
parts  of  North  America. 

While  emerging  from  infancy  some  of 
my  contemporaries  may  have  fallen  into 
the  error  of  the  little  boy  who  came  into 
the  house  with  a  haunted  look  in  his  eye 
and  asked  his  mother  if  mulberries  had 
six  legs  apiece  and  ran  round  in  the  dust 
of  the  road,  and  when  she  told  him  that 
such  was  not  the  case  with  mulberries  he 
said:  "Then,  mother,  I  feel  that  I  have 
made  a  mistake." 

To  the  best  of  my  recollection,  I  never 
made  this  mistake,  or  at  least  if  I  did  I  am 
sure  I  made  no  inquiry  afterward  which 
might  tend  further  to  increase  my  doubts; 
and  in  any  event  I  am  sure  that  by  the 
time  I  was  old  enough  to  stumble  over 
Mr.  Harper's  favorite  big  words  I  was 
old  enough  to  tell  the  difference  between 
an  ordinary  animal — say,  a  house  cat — and 
any  one  of  the  commoner  forms  of  plant 
life,  such  as,  for  example,  the  scaly-bark 
hickory  tree,  practically  at  a  glance.  I'll 

[33] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

add  this  too:  Nick  Carter  never  wasted 
any  of  the  golden  moments  which  he  and 
I  spent  together  in  elucidating  for  me  the 
radical  points  of  difference  between  the 
plants  and  the  animals. 

In  the  range  of  poetry  selected  by  the 
compilers  of  the  readers  for  my  especial 
benefit  as  I  progressed  onward  from  the 
primary  class  into  the  grammar  grades  I 
find  on  examination  of  these  earlier  Amer 
ican  authorities  an  even  greater  array  of 
chuckleheads  than  appear  in  the  prose  di 
visions.  I  shall  pass  over  the  celebrated 
instance — as  read  by  us  in  class  in  a  loud 
tone  of  voice  and  without  halt  for  inflec 
tion  or  the  taking  of  breath — of  the  Turk 
who  at  midnight  in  his  guarded  tent  was 
dreaming  of  the  hour  when  Greece  her 
knees  in  suppliance  bent  would  tremble 
at  his  power.  I  remember  how  vaguely  I 
used  to  wonder  who  it  was  that  was  going 
to  grease  her  knees  and  why  she  should 
feel  called  upon  to  have  them  greased  at 
all.  Also,  I  shall  pass  over  the  instance  of 

[34] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

Abou  Ben  Adhem,  whose  name  led  all  the 
rest  in  the  golden  book  in  which  the  angel 
was  writing.  Why  shouldn't  it  have  led 
all  the  rest?  A  man  whose  front  name 
begins  with  Ab,  whose  middle  initial  is 
B,  and  whose  last  name  begins  with  Ad 
will  be  found  leading  all  the  rest  in  any 
city  directory  or  any  telephone  list  any 
where.  Alphabetically  organized  as  he 
was,  Mr.  Adhem  just  naturally  had  to  lead; 
and  yet  for  hours  on  end  my  teacher  con 
sumed  her  energies  and  mine  in  a  more 
or  less  unsuccessful  effort  to  cause  me  to 
memorize  the  details  as  set  forth  by  Mr. 
Leigh  Hunt. 

In  three  separate  schoolbooks,  each  the 
work  of  a  different  compilator,  I  discover 
Sir  Walter  Scott's  poetic  contribution 
touching  on  Young  Lochinvar — Young 
Lochinvar  who  came  out  of  the  West,  the 
same  as  the.Plumb  plan  subsequently  came, 
and  the  Hiram  Johnson  presidential  boom 
and  the  initiative  and  the  referendum  and 
the  I.  W.  W.  Even  in  those  ancient  times 

[35] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

the  West  appears  to  have  been  a  favorite 
place  k>r  upsetting  things  to  come  from; 
so  I  can't  take  issue  with  Sir  Walter  there. 
But  I  do  take  issue  with  him  where  he 
says: 

So  light  to  the  croupe  the  fair  lady  he  swung, 
So  light  to  the  saddle  before  her  he  sprung! 

Even  in  childhood's  hour  I  am  sure  I 
must  have  questioned  the  ability  of  Young 
Lochinvar  to  perform  this  achievement,  for 
I  was  born  and  brought  up  in  a  horseback- 
riding  country.  Now  in  the  light  of  yet 
fuller  experience  I  wish  Sir  Walter  were 
alive  to-day  so  I  might  argue  the  question 
out  with  him. 

Let  us  consider  the  statement  on  its  phys 
ical  merits  solely.  Here  we  have  Young 
Lochinvar  swinging  the  lady  to  the  croupe, 
and  then  he  springs  to  the  saddle  in  front 
of  her.  Now  to  do  this  he  must  either 
take  a  long  running  start  and  leapfrog 
clear  over  the  lady's  head  as  she  sits  there, 
and  land  accurately  in  the  saddle,  which 
is  scarcely  a  proper  thing  to  do  to  any 

[36] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

lady,  aside  from  the  difficulty  of  spring 
ing  ten  or  fifteen  feet  into  the  air  and 
coming  down,  crotched  out,  on  a  given 
spot,  or  else  he  must  contribute  a  feat  in 
contortion  the  like  of  which  has  never  been 
duplicated  since. 

To  be  brutally  frank  about  it,  the  thing 
just  naturally  is  not  possible.  I  don't  care 
if  Young  Lochinvar  was  as  limber  as  a 
yard  of  fresh  tripe — and  he  certainly  did 
shake  a  lithesome  calf  in  the  measures  of 
the  dance  if  Sir  Walter,  In  an  earlier 
stanza,  is  tojbe  credited  with  veracity.  Even 
so,  I  deny  that  he  could  have  done  that 
croupe  trick.  There  isn't  a  croupier  at 
Monte  Carlo  who  could  have  done  it.  Buf 
falo  Bill  couldn't  have  done  it.  Ned 
Buntline  wouldn't  have  had  Buffalo  Bill 
trying  to  do  it.  Doug  Fairbanks  couldn't 
do  it.  I  couldn't  do  it  myself. 

Skipping  over  Robert  Southey's  tiresome 
redundancy  in  spending  so  much  of  his 
time  and  mine,  when  I  was  in  the  Fifth- 
Reader  stage,  in  telling  how  the  waters 
[37] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

came  down  at  Ladore  when  it  was  a  petri 
fied  cinch  that  they,  being  waters,  would 
have  to  come  down,  anyhow,  I  would  next 
direct  your  attention  to  two  of  the  foremost 
idiots  in  all  the  realm  of  poesy;  one  a 
young  idiot  and  one  an  older  idiot,  prob 
ably  with  whiskers,  but  both  embalmed 
in  verse,  and  both,  mind  you,  stuck  into 
every  orthodox  reader  to  be  glorified  be 
fore  the  eyes  of  childhood.  I  refer  to  that 
juvenile  champion  among  idiots,  the  boy 
who  stood  on  the  burning  deck,  and  to 
the  ship's  captain  in  the  poem  called  The 
Tempest.  Let  us  briefly  consider  the  given 
facts  as  regards  the  latter:  It  was  winter 
and  it  was  midnight  and  a  storm  was  on 
the  deep,  and  the  passengers  were  huddled 
in  the  cabin  and  not  a  soul  would  dare  to 
sleep,  and  they  were  shuddering  there  in 
silence — one  gathers  the  silence  was  so  deep 
you  could  hear  them  shuddering — and  the 
stoutest  held  his  breath,  which  is  consider 
able  feat,  as  I  can  testify,  because  the 
stouter  a  fellow  gets  the  harder  it  is  for 

[38] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

him  to  hold  his  breath  for  any  considerable 
period  of  time.  Very  well,  then,  this  is 
the  condition  of  affairs.  If  ever  there  was 
a  time  when  those  in  authority  should 
avoid  spreading  alarm  this  was  the  time. 
By  all  the  traditions  of  the  maritime  serv 
ice  it  devolved  upon  the  skipper  to  remain 
calm,  cool  and  collected.  But  what  does 
the  poet  reveal  to  a  lot  of  trusting  school 
children? 

"We  are  lost!"  the  captain  shouted, 
As  he  staggered  down  the  stair. 

He  didn't  whisper  it;  he  didn't  tell  it 
to  a  friend  in  confidence;  he  bellowed  it 
out  at  the  top  of  his  voice  so  all  the  pas 
sengers  could  hear  him.  The  only  possible 
excuse  which  can  be  offered  for  that  cap 
tain's  behavior  is  that  his  staggering  was 
due  not  to  the  motion  of  the  ship  but  to 
alcoholic  stimulant.  Could  you  imagine 
Little  Sure  Shot,  the  Terror  of  the  Paw 
nees,  drunk  or  sober,  doing  an  asinine  thing 
like  that?  Not  in  ten  thousand  years,  you 
couldn't.  But  then  we  must  remember 

[39] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

that  Little  Sure  Shot,  being  a  moral  dime- 
novel  hero,  never  indulged  in  alcoholic 
beverages  under  any  circumstances. 

The  boy  who  stood  on  the  burning  deck 
has  been  played  up  as  an  example  of  youth 
ful  heroism  for  the  benefit  of  the  young 
of  our  race  ever  since  Mrs.  Felicia  Doro 
thea  Hemans  set  him  down  in  black  and 
white.  I  deny  that  he  was  heroic.  I  insist 
that  he  merely  was  feeble-minded.  Let  us 
give  this  youth  the  careful  once-over:  The 
scene  is  the  Battle  of  the  Nile.  The  time 
is  August,  1798.  When  the  action  of  the 
piece  begins  the  boy  stands  on  the  burn 
ing  deck  whence  all  but  him  had  fled.  You 
see,  everyone  else  aboard  had  had  sense 
enough  to  beat  it,  but  he  stuck  because  his 
father  had  posted  him  there.  There  was 
no  good  purpose  he  might  serve  by  stick 
ing,  except  to  furnish  added  material  foi 
the  poetess,  but  like  the  leather-headed 
young  imbecile  that  he  was  he  stood  there 
with  his  feet  getting  warmer  all  the  time, 
while  the  flame  that  lit  the  battle's  wreck 

[40] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

shone    round   him   o'er   the   dead.     After 
which : 

There  came  a  burst  of  thunder  sound; 

The  boy — oh!  where  was  he? 
Ask  of  the  winds,  that  jar  around 

With  fragments  strewed  the  sea — 

Ask  the  waves.  Ask  the  fragments.  Ask 
Mrs.  Hemans.  Or,  to  save  time,  inquire 
of  me. 

He  has  become  totally  extinct.  He  is 
no  more  and  he  never  was  very  much.  Still 
we  need  not  worry.  Mentally  he  must 
have  been  from  the  very  outset  a  liability 
rather  than  an  asset.  Had  he  lived,  un 
doubtedly  he  would  have  wound  up  in  a 
home  for  the  feeble-minded.  It  is  better 
so,  as  it  is — better  that  he  should  be  spread 
about  over  the  surface  of  the  ocean  in 
a  broad  general  way,  thus  saving  all  the 
expense  and  trouble  of  gathering  him  up 
and  burying  him  and  putting  a  tombstone 
over  him.  He  was  one  of  the  incurables. 

Once  upon  a  time,  writing  a  little  piece 
on  another  subject,  I  advanced  the  claim 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

that  the  champion  half-wit  of  all  poetic 
anthology  was  Sweet  Alice,  who,  as  de 
scribed  by  Mr.  English,  wept  with  delight 
when  you  gave  her  a  smile,  and  trembled 
in  fear  at  your  frown.  This  of  course  was 
long  before  Prohibition  came  in.  These 
times  there  are  many  ready  to  weep  with 
delight  when  you  offer  to  give  them  a 
smile;  but  in  Mr.  English's  time  and 
Alice's  there  were  plenty  of  saloons  handy. 
I  remarked,  what  an  awful  kill-joy  Alice 
must  have  been,  weeping  in  a  disconcert 
ing  manner  when  somebody  smiled  in  her 
direction  and  trembling  violently  should 
anybody  so  much  as  merely  knit  his  brow! 
But  when  I  gave  Alice  first  place  in  the 
list  I  acted  too  hastily.  Second  thought 
should  have  informed  me  that  undeniably 
the  post  of  honor  belonged  to  the  central 
figure  of  Mr.  Henry  W.  Longfellow's 
poem,  Excelsior.  I  ran  across  it — Excel 
sior,  I  mean — in  three  different  readers  the 
other  day  when  I  was  compiling  some  of 
the  data  for  this  treatise.  Naturally  it 

[42] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

would  be  featured  in  all  three.  It  wouldn't 
do  to  leave  Mr.  Longfellow's  hero  out  of 
a  volume  in  which  space  was  given  to 
such  lesser  village  idiots  as  Casabianca  and 
the  Spartan  youth.  Let  us  take  up  this 
sad  case  verse  by  verse: 

The  shades  of  night  were  falling  fast, 
As  through  an  Alpine  village  passed 
A  youth,  who  bore,  'mid  snow  and  ice, 
A  banner  with  the  strange  device, 
Excelsior! 

There  we  get  an  accurate  pen  picture 
of  this  young  man's  deplorable  state.  He 
is  climbing  a  mountain  in  the  dead  of 
winter.  It  is  made  plain  later  on  that 
he  is  a  stranger  in  the  neighborhood,  conse 
quently  it  is  fair  to  assume  that  the  moun 
tain  in  question  is  one  he  has  never  climbed 
before.  Nobody  hired  him  to  climb  any 
mountain;  he  isn't  climbing  it  on  a  bet 
or  because  somebody  dared  him  to  climb 
one.  He  is  not  dressed  for  mountain  climb 
ing.  Apparently  he  is  wearing  the  costume 
in  which  he  escaped  from  the  institution 
where  he  had  been  an  inrrate — a  costume 

[43] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

consisting  simply  of  low  stockings,  sandals 
and  a  kind  of  flowing  woolen  nightshirt, 
cut  short  to  begin  with  and  badly  shrunken 
in  the  wash.  He  has  on  no  rubber  boots, 
no  sweater,  not  even  a  pair  of  ear  muffs. 
He  also  is  bare-headed.  Well,  any  time 
the  wearing  of  hats  went  out  of  fashion 
he  could  have  had  no  use  for  his  head, 
anyhow. 

I  grant  you  that  in  the  poem  Mr.  Long 
fellow  does  not  go  into  details  regarding 
the  patient's  garb.  I  am  going  by  the  illus 
tration  in  the  reader.  The  original  Mr. 
McGuffey  was  very  strong  for  illustrations. 
He  stuck  them  in  everywhere  in  his 
readers,  whether  they  matched  the  themes 
or  not.  Being  as  fond  of  pictures  as  he 
undoubtedly  was,  it  seems  almost  a  pity 
he  did  not  marry  the  tattooed  lady  in  a 
circus  and  then  when  he  got  tired  of  study 
ing  her  pictorially  on  one  side  he  could 
ask  her  to  turn  around  and  let  him  see  what 
she  had  to  say  on  the  other  side.  Perhaps 
he  did.  I  never  gleaned  much  regarding 

[44] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

the    family    history    of    the    McGufTeys. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  wardrobe  is  en 
tirely  unsuited  for  the  rigors  of  the  climate 
in  Switzerland  in  winter  time.  Symptom- 
atically  it  marks  the  wearer  as  a  person 
who  is  mentally  lacking.  He  needs  a 
keeper  almost  as  badly  as  he  needs  some 
heavy  underwear.  But  this  isn't  the  worst 
of  it.  Take  the  banner.  It  bears  the 
single  word  "Excelsior."  The  youth  is 
going  through  a  strange  town  late  in  the 
evening  in  his  nightie,  and  it  winter  time, 
carrying  a  banner  advertising  a  shredded 
wood-fiber  commodity  which  won't  be  in 
vented  until  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  after 
he  is  dead! 

Can  you  beat  it?    You  can't  even  tie  it. 

Let  us  look  further  into  the  matter: 

His  brow  was  sad;  his  eyes  beneath 
Flashed  like  a  falchion  from  its  sheath, 
And  like  a  silver  clarion  rung 
The  accents  of  that  unknown  tongue, 
Excelsior! 

Get  it,  don't  you?  Even  his  features  fail 
to  jibe.  His  brow  is  corrugated  with  grief, 

[45] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

but  the  flashing  of  the  eye  denotes  a  lack 
of  intellectual  coherence  which  any  alienist 
would  diagnose  at  a  glance  as  evidence  of 
total  dementia,  even  were  not  confirmatory 
proof  offered  by  his  action  in  huckstering 
for  a  product  which  doesn't  exist,  in  a 
language  which  no  one  present  can  under 
stand.  The  most  delirious  typhoid  fever 
patient  you  ever  saw  would  know  better 
than  that. 
To  continue: 

In  happy  homes  he  saw  the  light 
Of  household  fires  gleam  warm  and  bright; 
Above,  the  spectral  glaciers  shone, 
And  from  his  lips  escaped  a  groan, 
Excelsior! 

The  last  line  gives  him  away  still~more 
completely.  He  is  groaning  now,  where 
a  moment  before  he  was  clarioning.  A 
bit  later,  with  one  of  those  shifts  character 
istic  of  the  mentally  unbalanced,  his  mood 
changes  and  again  he  is  shouting.  He's 
worse  than  a  cuckoo  clock,  that  boy. 

"Try  not  the  Pass/'  the  old  man  said; 
"Dark  lowers  the  tempest  overhead, 

[46] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

The  roaring  torrent  is  deep  and  wide!" 
And  loud  that  clarion  voice  replied^ 
Excelsior! 

"Oh  stay"  the  maiden  said,  "and  rest 

Thy  weary  head  upon  this  breast1/' 

A  tear  stood  in  his  bright  blue  eye, 

But  still  he  answered,  with  a  sigh, 

Excelsior! 

"Beware  the  pine-tree's  withered  branch! 
Beware  the  awful  avalanche!" 
This  was  the  peasant's  last  Good  night; 
A  voice  replied,  far  up  the  height, 
Excelsior! 

These  three  verses  round  out  the  picture. 
The  venerable  citizen  warns  him  against 
the  Pass;  pass  privileges  up  that  moun 
tain  have  all  been  suspended.  A  kind- 
hearted  maiden  tenders  hospitalities  of  a 
most  generous  nature,  considering  that  she 
never  saw  the  young  man  before.  Some 
people  might  even  go  so  far  as  to  say 
that  she  should  have  been  ashamed  of  her 
self;  others,  that  Mr.  Longfellow,  in  giving 
her  away,  was  guilty  of  an  indelicacy,  to 
say  the  least  of  it.  Possibly  she  was  prac 
ticing  up  to  qualify  for  membership  on 

[47] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

the  reception  committee  the  next  time  the 
visiting  firemen  came  to  her  town  or  when 
there  was  going  to  be  an  Elks'  reunion;  so 
I  for  one  shall  not  question  her  motives. 
She  was  hospitable — let  it  go  at  that.  The 
peasant  couples  with  his  good-night  mes 
sage  a  reference  to  the  danger  of  falling 
pine  wood  and  also  avalanches,  which  have 
never  been  pleasant  things  to  meet  up  with 
when  one  is  traveling  on  a  mountain  in 
an  opposite  direction. 

All  about  him  firelights  are  gleaming, 
happy  families  are  gathered  before  the 
hearthstone,  and  through  the  windows  the 
evening  yodel  may  be  heard  percolating 
pleasantly.  There  is  every  inducement  for 
the  youth  to  drop  in  and  rest  his  poor, 
tired,  foolish  face  and  hands  and  thaw 
out  his  knee  joints  and  give  the  maiden 
a  chance  to  make  good  on  that  proposition 
of  hers.  But  no,  high  up  above  timber 
line  he  has  an  engagement  with  himself 
and  Mr.  Longfellow  to  be  frozen  as  stiff 
as  a  dried  herring;  and  so,  now  groaning, 

[48] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

now  with  his  eye  flashing,  now  with  a  tear 
— undoubtedly  a  frozen  tear — standing  in 
the  eye,  now  clarioning,  now  sighing,  on 
ward  and  upward  he  goes: 

At  break  of  day,  as  heavenward 
The  pious  monks  of  Saint  Bernard 
Uttered  the  oft-repeated  prayer, 
A  voice  cried  through  the  startled  aif, 
Excelsior! 

I'll  say  this  much  for  him:  He  certainly 
is  hard  to  kill.  He  can  stay  out  all  night 
in  those  clothes,  with  the  thermometer 
below  zero,  and  at  dawn  still  be  able  to 
chirp  the  only  word  that  is  left  in  his 
vocabulary.  He  can't  last  forever  though. 
There  has  to  be  a  finish  to  this  lamentable 
fiasco  sometime.  We  get  it: 

A  traveler,  by  the  faithful  hound, 
Half  buried  in  the  snow  was  found, 
Still  grasping  in  his  hand  of  ice 
That  banner  with  the  strange  device. 
Excelsior! 

There  in  the  twilight  cold  and  gray, 
Lifeless,  but  beautiful,  he  lay, 
And  from  the  sky  serene  and  far, 
A  voice  fell,  like  a  jailing  star, 
Excelsior! 

[49] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

The  meteoric  voice  said  "Excelsior!"  It 
should  have  said  "Bonehead!"  It  would 
have  said  it,  too,  if  Ned  Buntline  had  been 
handling  the  subject,  for  he  had  a  sense  of 
verities,  had  Ned.  Probably  that  was  one 
of  the  reasons  why  they  barred  his  works 
out  of  all  the  schoolbooks. 

With  the  passage  of  years  I  rather  im 
agine  that  Lieutenant  G ,  of  the  United 

States  Navy,  who  went  to  so  much  trouble 
and  took  so  many  needless  pains  in  order 
to  become  a  corpse  may  have  vanished 
from  the  school  readers.  I  admit  I  failed 
to  find  him  in  any  of  the  modern  editions 
through  which  I  glanced,  but  I  am  able 
to  report,  as  a  result  of  my  researches, 
that  the  well-known  croupe  specialist, 
Young  Lochinvar,  is  still  there,  and  so  like 
wise  is  Casabianca,  the  total  loss;  and  as 
I  said  before,  I  ran  across  Excelsior  three 
times. 

Just  here  the  other  day,  when  I  was  pre 
paring  the  material  for  this  little  book,  I 
happened  upon  an  advertisement  in  a  New 

[50] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

York  paper  of  an  auction  sale  of  a  collec 
tion  of  so-called  dime  novels,  dating  back 
to  the  old  Beadle's  Boy's  Library  in  the 
early  eighties  and  coming  on  down  through 
the  years  into  the  generation  when  Nick 
and  Old  Cap  were  succeeding  some  of  the 
earlier  favorites.  I  read  off  a  few  of  the 
leading  titles  upon  the  list: 

Bronze  Jack,  the  California  Thorough 
bred;  or,  The  Lost  City  of  the  Basaltic 
Buttes.  A  strange  story  of  a  desperate  ad 
venture  after  fortune  in  the  weird,  wild 
Apache  land.  By  Albert  W.  Aiken. 

Tombstone  Dick,  the  Train  Pilot;  or, 
The  Traitor's  Trail.  A  story  of  the  Arizona 
Wilds.  By  Ned  Buntline. 

The  Tarantula  of  Taos;  or,  Giant 
George's  Revenge.  A  tale  of  Sardine-box 
City,  Arizona.  By  Major  Sam  S.  (Buck 
skin  Sam)  Hall. 

Redtop  Rube,  the  Vigilante  Prince;  or, 
The  Black  Regulators  of  Arizona.  By 
Major  E.  L.  St.  Vrain. 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

Old  Grizzly  Adams,  the  Bear  Tamer; 
or,  The  Monarch  of  the  Mountains. 

Deadly  Eye  and  the  Prairie  Rover. 

Arizona  Joe,  the  Boy  Pard  of  Texas 
Jack. 

Pacific  Pete,  the  Prince  of  the  Revolver. 
Kit  Carson,  King  of  the  Guides. 

Leadville  Nick,  the  Boy  Sport;  or,  The 
Mad  Miner's  Revenge. 

Lighthouse  Lige;  or,  The  Firebrand  of 
the  Everglades. 

The  Desperate  Dozen;  or,  The  Fair 
Fiend. 

Nighthawk  Kit;  or,  The  Daughter  of 
the  Ranch. 

Joaquin,  the  Saddle  King. 

Mustang  Sam,  the  Wild  Rider  of  the 
Plains. 

Adventures  of  Wild  Bill,  the  Pistol 
Prince,  from  Youth  to  his  Death  by  As 
sassination.  Deeds  of  Daring,  Adventure 

[52] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

and  Thrilling  Incidents  in  the  Life  of  J. 
B.  Hickok,  known  to  the  World  as  Wild 
Bill. 

These  titles  and  many  another  did  I 
read,  and  reading  them  my  mind  slid  back 
along  a  groove  in  my  brain  to  a  certain 
stable  loft  in  a  certain  Kentucky  town,  and 
I  said  to  myself  that  if  I  had  a  boy — say, 
about  twelve  or  fourteen  years  old — I 
would  go  to  this  auction  and  bid  in  these 
books  and  I  would  back  them  up  and  re- 
enforce  them  with  some  of  the  best  of  the 
collected  works  of  Nick  Carter  and  Cap 
Collier  and  Nick  Carter,  Jr.,  and  Frank 
Reade,  and  I  would  buy,  if  I  could  find 
it  anywhere,  a  certain  paper-backed  vol 
ume  dealing  with  the  life  of  the  James 
boys — not  Henry  and  William,  but  Jesse 
and  Frank — which  I  read  ever  so  long  ago; 
and  I  would  confer  the  whole  lot  of  them 
upon  that  offspring  of  mine  and  I  would 
say  to  him: 

[53] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

"Here,  my  son,  is  something  for  you;  a 
rare  and  precious  gift.  Read  these  vol 
umes  openly.  Never  mind  the  crude  style 
in  which  most  of  them  are  written.  It 
can't  be  any  worse  than  the  stilted  and 
artificial  style  in  which  your  school  reader 
is  written;  and,  anyhow,  if  you  are  ever 
going  to  be  a  writer,  style  is  a  thing  which 
you  laboriously  must  learn,  and  then  hav 
ing  acquired  added  wisdom  you  will  for 
get  part  of  it  and  crmck  the  rest  of  it 
out  of  the  window  and  acquire  a  style  of 
your  own,  which  merely  is  another  way  of 
saying  that  if  you  have  good  taste  to  start 
with  you  will  have  what  is  called  style  in 
writing,  and  if  you  haven't  that  sense  of 
good  taste  you  won't  have  a  style  and  noth 
ing  can  give  it  to  you. 

"Read  them  for  the  thrills  that  are  in 
them.  Read  them,  remembering  that  if 
this  country  had  not  had  a  pioneer  breed 
of  Buckskin  Sams  and  Deadwood  Dicks 
we  should  have  had  no  native  school  of 

[54] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

dime  novelists.  Read  them  for  their  brisk 
and  stirring  movement;  for  the  spirit  of 
outdoor  adventure  and  life  which  crowds 
them;  for  their  swift  but  logical  proces 
sions  of  sequences;  for  the  phases  of 
pioneer  Americanism  they  rawly  but 
graphically  portray,  and  for  their  moral 
values.  Read  them  along  with  your 
Coopers  and  your  Ivanhoe  and  your  Mayne 
Reids.  Read  them  through,  and  perhaps 
some  day,  if  fortune  is  kinder  to  you  than 
ever  it  was  to  your  father,  with  a  back 
ground  behind  you  and  a  vision  before 
you,  you  may  be  inspired  to  sit  down  and 
write  a  dime  novel  of  your  own  almost 
good  enough  to  be  worthy  of  mention  in 
the  same  breath  with  the  two  greatest  ad 
venture  stories — dollar-sized  dime  novels 
is  what  they  really  are — that  ever  were 
written;  written,  both  of  them,  by  sure- 
enough  writing  men,  who,  I'm  sure,  must 
have  based  their  moods  and  their  modes 
upon  the  memories  of  the  dime  novels 

[55] 


A  Plea  for  Old  Cap  Collier 

which  they,  they  in  their  turn,  read  when 
they  were  boys  of  your  age. 

"I  refer,  my  son,  to  a  book  called 
Huckleberry  Finn,  and  to  a  book  called 
Treasure  Island." 


THE  END 


[56] 


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